Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that plays the dominant role in global warming and climate change. Much research effort has been spent over the last few decades in finding ways to decrease emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, including carbon sequestration.
One of the proposed solutions is to capture CO2 at high-emission point sources such as fossil fuel based power plants, steel mills, cement plants, etc., and store or “sequester” the CO2 underground, in depleted oil and gas fields, unminable coal seams, and deep saline aquifers. However, there are many locations where either a lack of appropriate geological storage sites or public opposition to local underground storage of the highly compressed gas prevents this sequestration approach.
One alternative is to use the captured CO2 as a low cost carbon feedstock for the production of high value chemicals. By converting the CO2 into liquid or solid carbon-based compounds, the release of more CO2 greenhouse gas into the environment can be prevented, or at least significantly delayed.